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Fwd: Intel guidance for edit

Released on 2012-10-19 08:00 GMT

Email-ID

1275352

Date

2010-06-13 22:24:29

From

mike.marchio@stratfor.com

To

ann.guidry@stratfor.com

heads up on this, there may be subsequent tweaks to look for on the list,
but make sure's lauren's kyrgyz stuff gets added in

peter asked me to put this through edit, and i tried to address kamran's
comments on the turkey section going against our other net assessments by
rewriting that para (in bold, please read that part, MESA team, to make
sure it's kosher). i also eliminated the WC section after talking with
peter, as the focus on a terrorist attack as was originally written went
against our assessment that crime was gonna be the thing to watch, to
which he replied that if that was the case, then it doesn't belong on the
intel guidance

writers - FYI lauren is going to be adding a bullet on kyrgyzstan in about
an hour, so just get started on this and be ready for that to come

The Russian leadership recognizes that a) the country's demographics
problems are shrinking its labor force both quantitatively and
qualitatively and b) that it lacks the indigenous capital resources to
hold its current economic structure - much less anything grander -
together. But Russia also enjoys the fact that Europe is fractured (and
becoming more so) while the United States is occupied with the Middle East
and South Asia. If there was ever a time for the Russians to seize the
day, it is now. What they want to do is ensure that a strong Russia will
still be around after another generation. That means somehow importing the
capital, technology and expertise necessary to launch Russia forward 30
years technologically. This coming week, the International Economic Forum
(not to be confused with the conference that's held in Davos) will hold
its annual conference in St. Petersburg. The Kremlin is hoping to use the
conference to seal dozens - indeed hundreds - of resources-for-tech deals
that aim to provide Russia with what it needs in exchange for resources
and Soviet-era technologies that Western firms desire. It is far too early
to even think whether this process will succeed. For now we need to limit
ourselves to gathering whatever information we can on the foreign
participants and the deals they are striking with their Russian
equivalents. Succeed or fail, this conference will help determine the
nature of the next few years of Russian foreign and economic policy.

There is a new batch of UN sanctions on Iran as of June 9, designed to
punish Iran for not providing sufficient transparency on its nuclear
program. Unlike previous batches, this round actually has teeth (albeit
not particularly sharp ones, and not without loopholes). The sanctions
target the Iranian military/intelligence complex (the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corp) directly, any/all Iranian foreign financial
institutions, and Iranian shipping of all sorts. The sanctions also sport
two characteristics that are particularly worrying from Tehran's point of
view. First, they green-light a broad array of actions that an interested
UN member state (read: the United States) can take to enforce the
sanctions. Now the United States has the ability to make the case that it
has legal cover for pretty much any step against Iran it would like short
of a bombing campaign. Second, the sanctions were approved with not only
the full knowledge, but also participation, of Russia - the country that
Iran has been depending upon to defend Iran in the UN Security Council.
This development generates four separate intel taskings for us:

1) Iran's access to international markets is sharply limited, and
between the new sanctions and Russia's change of tune, Tehran needs to
find alternatives. The only nearby state that has the necessary political
independence to potentially defy the Americans is Turkey. In the next week
we need to get inside both the Turks' and the Iranians' heads to see if
and how they are inching towards each other.

2) The Iranians will also probably be looking for ways to knock the
Americans down a peg. Their best option for that is to disrupt Iraqi
government coalition negotiations. Those negotiations now (finally) are
interesting, both because they were finally making progress, and because
now the Iranians have a vested interest in seeing them fail. Time to dust
off our contacts among the Shia in Iraq.

3) Another option to distract the Americans and thus release the
pressure would be to give the Americans something new to worry about in
Afghanistan. Normally that would be done in concert with Russia and India
- the other two powers with which Iran has been collaborating to maximize
Tehran's influence. With Russia shifting position, we need to focus on New
Delhi to see if the Iranians are coming up with any new ideas. Also, we
need to look at groups in western Afghanistan that Iran has more influence
over, doubly so for those groups that have minimal links to other foreign
powers.

4) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been the face of taking
a hard line with the West on nuclear negotiations. That policy - at least
for now - has failed. Iran, like any country, is composed of many
factions. We'd expect many of those factions to seek to take advantage of
Ahmadinejad's weakness to bolster their own position. It is time for us to
see what is going on both in the camp of the Supreme Leader - who serves
as arbiter over the Iranian system - as well as that of Rafsanjani and
Larijani, the leaders of the group that was sharply reduced in power in
the aftermath of the 2009 protests against Ahmadinejad.

Despite Turkey's persistent condemnation of Israel's actions against the
Gaza flotilla, as well as the heavy international pressure Israel has been
placed under as a result of the incident on the Mavi Marmara, Israel does
not seem likely to change its mind just yet in regards to its position on
the Gaza blockade. The Turks didn't necessarily expect the flotilla to
force a change in the Israeli position, but are also engaging in a
delicate balancing act at the moment, weighing the desire to enhance its
status in the Arab world with trying to maintain some semblance of
relations with Israel, its military ally in the region. There are early
indications that the Turks are looking for a way to come down off the limb
they have sat upon, however; it would be unwise for the Americans to not
provide a potential road. We need to confirm what the Turks are thinking
about their position, and then find how what the Obama administration is
thinking about possible solutions. A logical path for both discussions
would be through the American and Turkish militaries which enjoy far more
cordial relations than the American and Turkish civilian governments.

South Korea formally briefs the UN Security Council on the sinking of the
Chonan this coming week. It is difficult to anticipate how it will be
received, but what is sure is that China will be on the hot seat. No one
has any doubt that it was the North Koreans who sank the ship, and China
is the only country that has the tools to effectively pressure Pyongyang.
China prefers for this entire issue to go away. The question is whether
the other states on the Council (in particular the United States) will let
it. This is one of those rare circumstances where talking with the State
Department might actually provide a glimpse into American plans. From the
other side, it is time to start pinging the North Koreans to ascertain how
they would react to Chinese pressure.